Supernova 'Mingus' could shed light on dark energy

Nicknamed "Mingus", it was described at the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in the US.

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Formally called SN SCP-0401, the supernova was something of a chance find in a survey carried out in part by the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) using the Hubble space telescope, first undertaken in 2004.

But the data were simply not good enough to pin down what was seen. As David Rubin of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author on the study, told the AAS meeting, "for a sense of brightness, this supernova is about as bright as a firefly viewed from 3,000 miles away".